Indian Intelligence Foils Suspected Terror Plot to Kill Bangladesh PM

Indian intelligence authorities have revealed they have uncovered a terror plan masterminded by the Islamists to assassinate the Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and carry out a coup d'état against the Dhaka government.

According to three security sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, cited by Reuters, New Delhi's National Intelligence Agency (NIA) authorities had detected the plot by the outlawed Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen militants.

The extremist organisation has carried several attacks in Bangladesh earlier.

Indian authorities have shared the intelligence details with their Bangladeshi counterparts. Though Dhaka did not directly acknowledge they have received the information, officials have said they heightened the security at the India-Bangladesh bordering region.

"The strategy was to hit the political leaders of the country and demolish the democratic infrastructure of Bangladesh. This was all being planned on Indian soil and we could have been blamed if there was an attack," a senior interior ministry official in New Delhi was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Recently in Bangladesh, intelligence officials are also said to have unearthed a similar terror plan to assassinate Hasina, after interrogating a detained militant belonging to the Harkat-ul-jihad al-Islami (HuJI).

The latest assertions have come when the Bangladeshi Islamist leader Motiur Rahman Nizami was given a death penalty by a special tribunal stoking tensions. The 71-year-old leader of Jamaat-e-Islami has been sentenced to death after he was found guilty of charges which include genocide, murder, torture, and rape.